


there's not so many ways that this could possibly end

by Cirkne



Series: would it really kill you if we kissed [2]
Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Getting Together, Happy Ending, M/M, Multi, Pining, Polyamory, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 06:39:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12906276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cirkne/pseuds/Cirkne
Summary: Mike realizes he trusts unpredictability more than he could ever trust destiny.OrBill, Ben and Beverly are all soulmates. Mike doesn't want to find his.





	there's not so many ways that this could possibly end

**Author's Note:**

> you dont hav to read the first fic to get this one but you can if you wanna make me super happy

His parents, before everything, had been soulmates. He grew up watching them. The silent understanding they shared of everything and soft touches that they probably weren't aware of anymore and how they fit in ways you never expected them to. 

His soulmate mark has always rested in the same spot his parents' have, just below the crook of his arm. For most of his childhood he wondered if the honeycomb meant his soulmate liked bees or worked with flowers or preferred things sweet. He imagined them the way he imagined everything in his future, covered in a sort of fog. Hazy in the morning light but still there, solid in the back of his mind. He imagined soft hands and quiet laughter, imagined the way they would grow to know him like it was the most natural thing in the world.

And he imagined their hair and the way they would talk to him, only ever gentle and the way they would lean into him when he was talking about history or maybe he would lean into them when they were talking about whatever it was they liked and the way he would learn to like it too, for them. 

Honey on toast and his mother's laugh and the summer he kept asking for a bicycle and the way his dad would say _maybe for your birthday, Mike_ like it was a promise and his white sheets and the books on his bedroom floor and the tree branches resting against his window and soft light hitting him in the face on the mornings he was allowed to sleep in and then-

And then the fire. 

And then the smell of smoke that stays in his clothes for what seems like months and waking up in the middle of the night, afraid that he is suffocating. And his granddad, more and more annoyed with him each day and the bicycle he has for delivering orders. 

He looks at his mark in the mirror and realizes, for the first time, that it scares him. That everything he has made it out to be in his mind: a promise of happiness and safety and a sign of hope before anything else, was a lie. There is a person for you, sure and maybe they _are_ perfect, maybe they _will_ make you feel whole but it doesn't matter. Nothing ever matters in this awful town. There's no _good_ here, no _forever_. He is cursed to love and lose the way everyone is. He will never be in control of anything, not even his own body. 

So he stops putting honey on toast. Stops taking his tea sweet. Avoids looking at the soulmate mark as much as he can. He bites his hands when he's nervous, pretends that all his love for history burned together with all the books he owned. He accepts whatever life throws at him because he has to. 

He learns to follow.

*

And then there’s a boy with coke bottle glasses and sunflowers on his shoulders and he says _you’re one of us now_ and Mike learns to say losers with a fondness unlike anything he has ever felt.

*

“I w-will f-fucking t-throw you o-o-out,” Bill says in his car, two weeks after he got his license. Mike’s in the back with Beverly and Richie, and Ben sits in the passenger seat, reads a book. He does that, sometimes, ignores them to get lost somewhere far away. Mike can never figure out how he manages. Richie and Beverly were arguing about the scientific name of some plant when they got into the car and it’s escalated into them trying to jab the other in the ribs and laughing way too loud. They’re always ridiculous like that when forced into small spaces together.

“Aw, babe,” Beverly says, in that sweet mock voice she does only to make fun of other couples, as if they _aren’t_ one of those couples. “You can’t throw me out. Just throw out Richie, he can walk.”

“No, fuck you,” Richie laughs, holding her hands to stop her from hitting him again. “You can’t use your soulmate privilege here and it’s your fault anyway because you’re wrong. Tell her, Ben,” he shifts to attempt to both hold her in place and reach her ribs with his elbow but Beverly stomps on his foot before he can. Mike rolls his eyes.

“No I’m _not,_ trashmouth, you just don’t know how to lose gracefully and leave Ben out of this, he would have told us already if he knew the answer,” she’s wiggling to get out of his grip and Mike turns to look at Bill’s hands on the wheel just to make sure his knuckles aren’t going white. He’s always been slow to anger but it must be exhausting taking care of them like this all the time. Still, his hands are resting on the wheel with the confidence of someone who’s had his license for way longer than Bill has and in the rear view mirror, Mike can see him smiling so they’re fine.

“No he wouldn’t have because he knows you’re wrong and he loves you and doesn’t want to hurt your feelings,” Richie’s saying. “Totally unfair, Ben, what about my feelings?” Ben shifts, flips the page of his book. Mike realizes, suddenly, that Richie’s right and he thinks _god, they’re so in love_ and then he turns to look out the window and doesn’t wonder why his chest is exploding with affection.

*

Beverly's mark is a campfire just above her wrist and the flames match the red of her hair. It scares him more than it should. Beverly is a flame, too. She stands tall and when she says something she means it in a way that most people don't. People bite and she lets them and then she bites back. Her hands always fists, her body a rebellion against the world. She says _try me_ without opening her mouth. She’s sharp angles, she’s the sound of a car engine behind you. She is there to burn and Mike knows burning too well to trust her. He looks at her and thinks of unstoppable heat and it makes sense. Except, nothing ever does. She's fragile and calm in a way he has never seen fire be. She craves affection how boys crave her attention, maybe more. She is rosy cheeks and pale skin and freckles like sand. She is the bravery in being afraid, the strength behind allowing yourself to be weak. She is the color of peaches. She is the soil in a flower garden. She is everything fragile in the world and yet she refuses to break.

“Mike,” she says on a Sunday, legs crossed on the library stairs, one of the sleeves of her jacket pushed up to her elbow, reds and oranges on her wrist. He wonders sometimes if she does it to prove to other people that she can be loved or if it’s her that needs convincing.

“Yeah?” he goes, watches her lift her cigarette to her lips, inhale. They’re waiting for Ben and Stanley. Richie and Eddie are probably doing their own thing, together, as usual and Bill’s sick at home. Mike knows he’s worried, the way he always is when he’s not there to make sure they’re safe and they might go visit him later, just so he knows.

Beverly blows the smoke out of her mouth.

“You think everything can work out even if you’re not soulmates?” He’s the last out of them to not have found his. Which doesn’t surprise him, really. Richie and Eddie have always been _RichieandEddie,_ to him at least, he didn’t know them for the few months before they realized but he figures it didn’t change much and Beverly and Bill met Ben just before Mike became their friend and Stanley-

Stanley’s the reason Beverly is asking him this at all. And for his sake, for a boy whose body is telling him he is not destined to find love, Mike wants to say: _yes_ but instead he turns away from Beverly to look ahead and presses his elbows into his thighs, hard.

“I don’t know if everything can work out even if you _are_ soulmates,” he admits. Places his hand where his mark rests under his jacket without thinking about it and then pulls it away as soon as he realizes what he’s doing. 

“I hope your soulmate is good to you,” Beverly says, in an empty way, like telling someone it’s raining when you’re both wet from it. They will be, they both know this. There is no scenario in his head where he meets them and does not fall for them the way his friends have fallen for each other. The inevitability of that scares him to no end.

“Me too,” he tells her and she rests her head on his shoulder, her curls soft against the side of his face. Her breathing matching his. Mike realizes he trusts the unpredictability of her more than he could ever trust destiny.

In a selfish way, he hopes he never meets his soulmate. 

* 

Beverly, Ben and Bill, leaning into each other on the coffee shop sofa, talking about some movie Mike’s never seen and Richie, across the table from them, trying to take a bite out of the pie slice Eddie bought and Eddie, keeping it away from him, too loudly, saying:

“Fuck off, asshole.”

Stan turns away from them to look at Mike where they’re standing in line to order, eyebrows furrowed, says:

“Promise you won’t leave me when you find your soulmate because I’ll _die,_ ” and he’s kidding, of course, but there’s something there, behind the smile on his face. In his mind, he is destined to be alone.

“If you promise to stop me if I ever act like that,” he answers motioning to their table where Richie’s mostly draped over Eddie now, kissing the corner of his lips and Bill, Beverly and Ben are trying each other’s coffees, it seems, as if they haven’t been ordering the same thing since they were fourteen.

“I’ll kill you myself,” Stanley deadpans. Mike bursts into laughter. They ignore the longing they both feel in their skin.

*

They’re supposed to meet Richie, Eddie and Stanley by the barrens but Bill’s late to pick them up so Ben and him sit on the porch of his house and wait. Beverly’s visiting family in Portland so it’s just them boys for the weekend and Mike’s painfully aware that something is missing. 

It’s probably worse for Ben, he thinks. They’ve talked about it before. The way there’s something constantly pulling you towards your soulmates once you’ve found them. Mike tries not to think about it but he knows it’s there and he knows it’ll overcome him too one day.

Ben has his temple pressed to Mike’s shoulder and he’s saying something about the french revolution and Mike wonders how there are people who can stay this gentle despite everything.

“-devours it’s own children, right, and-” Mike’s read about the french revolution so he knows all of this by now but Ben is warm next to him and there’s so much love in his voice that Mike can’t even think of interrupting him and so he listens, hangs onto every word and tries not to think of how he imagined this years before he even met Ben. 

And isn’t that what this is? Hasn’t he been filling the emptiness that not finding your soulmate leaves you with by loving _them,_ instead, learning everything he thought he’d learn about the person he was destined to be with.

Ben hums love songs under his breath when he’s tired, writes poems on coffee shop napkins and the back of grocery store receipts. He sings loudly, talks fast. His arms are always open and his heart is right there on his sleeve. Just above the waves of his mark, Mike imagines. He is endless. He calls to you and you have no choice but to go. He seems simple and yet there’s so much to him Mike can never figure out. When Bill and Beverly show off their marks, Ben hides his in a quiet attempt to keep something to himself. He was made to love and he does so with everything he has. He finds things that consume him and only talks about them for weeks or months and Mike can’t help being reeled in. He wants to know everything and Ben is there to give it to him, like he knows that Mike gave this up and wishes desperately, that he hadn’t. He probably does. He notices stuff like that and when he looks at you it feels like there’s water in your lungs. Ben is the ocean. You are drowning and you cannot find it in you to mind.

Mike thinks, to himself, that this is a form of losing control but he’s too far gone to do anything about it.

When Bill gets there, Mike slides into the back seat and busies himself with his seat belt to avoid looking at them as they kiss hello.

“B-been e-enlightening Mike, buttercup?” Bill asks starting the car. He’s wearing a shirt that used to be Mike’s before he left it at Bill’s house and he wants to mention it but then Bill would probably give it back so he stays quiet.

“He knows all this stuff already,” Ben answers, casual, changes the radio station that was playing before Bill got here. There’s something about the way he says it. Reassuring. Easy. Mike feels his face go warm. Ben settles on a love song.

“So what took you so long, Bill?” Mike asks over it to change the subject. It doesn’t come out as easy as he would have hoped but they don’t mention it. 

“Dad,” Bill answers and doesn’t explain but it’s not like he really needs to with them. Ben reaches his hand over to squeeze Bill’s wrist for a second. Mike’s reminded of his parents, in a way. They are jigsaw pieces, he thinks. Wonders what the other three are doing at the barrens.

*

He dreams of bees and quiet buzzing outside his window. He dreams of standing on the edge of something and _waiting_. Sand is slipping through his fingertips. There’s something big, in the distance, and he wakes up before he can make it out through the fog.

*

They have a tradition, Bill and him where they bike to the cemetery and visit the graves of Mike’s parents and Bill’s brother together. It’s not a tradition two eighteen year olds should have but Mike’s incredibly thankful for it. They do it for Georgie’s birthday and then for Mike’s parents’ birthdays. And they’re not the only ones to have lost someone, sure, but it’s different with them, it always has been. Sometimes the others come with, sometimes they don’t have much time to do anything but look at the gravestones, sometimes they spend the entire time there quiet but it’s always them two, together. 

There are things you’d expect from a boy with a stutter, soon an adult and still tripping over his own words. People look at Bill and they know there’s _something_ behind everything he is, behind the way that talking claws at his throat and they think, maybe, this is a boy who has not learned to be brave yet but they’re always wrong. Mike has never met anyone like him. Bill is confident before he is anything else and he was born to stand on top, to walk in front. He was born to be heard. His life is a path of stories, a forest of words. He has always cared about others before he cared about himself. His mark is a flower field, mountains in the distance. He stands tall and seemingly unmovable. He is there so they have someone to lean on and Mike does just that, sometimes more than he should. It’s not smart to depend on someone like this but he stopped caring years ago.

Bill has a car now but they decide that biking there is too familiar to give up so they ride their bikes, Mike just behind Bill. The sun will start to set soon. Georgie would have been turning twelve today. Bill’s been mostly quiet this afternoon while they hung out in Ben’s room, listening to music and Ben and Beverly had treated him extra carefully, their words gentle and their hands on his shoulders. Mike had asked them if they wanted to come with and Ben had said _I think it’s better if it’s just you today_ because he was good at picking up on things people wanted without them telling him. So Mike follows Bill to the cemetery and they leave their bikes by the gate and then they walk towards Georgie’s grave and just before they reach it, Bill finds Mike’s hand to hold. It’s easy to forget how much Bill depends on them too sometimes. Not much has changed since they’ve been here last. There are new candles, already burned out from when the Denbrough family had come here on the anniversary of Georgie’s death. New weeds, sprouting, like a threat of forgetting but that’s the most of it. 

There are days, of course, when moving on seems easy. It’s been years after all and yet.

“Hey,” Bill says, soft, after what seems like forever and breathes out, hard, squeezes Mike’s hand. “Hey Georgie. I m-mis-s-” he cuts himself off. Mike’s witnessed it so many times before. He doesn’t like stuttering in front of his brother, even if he will never be able to hear. 

A few rows ahead of them there’s someone else, by another grave, flowers resting in their hands. Mike swallows, pulls Bill closer to himself and then Billy breaks, raw, his breathing turning into sobs against Mike’s shoulder.

“Happy birthday, Georgie,” Mike says to the gravestone. He thinks that the numbers etched into stone, a testament of how short Georgie had had of life, will never become easier to look at.

By the time Bill calms down, the sky is turning orange.

There’s not exactly much left of a person that burned to death. Not enough to justify a casket but there’s a grave and a tombstone with both of his parents’ names on it and he almost feels guilty that he doesn’t cry when they go to it but it’s probably better this way. Bill’s too upset to be taking care of him. So he only stays there for a moment, whispers his _I love you_ and wonders what his parents would think of him if they were still alive and then he turns to one of his best friends.

“Let’s get back,” he says, tries not to think of the way Bill looks at him. Warm and yet broken.

When they reach their bikes, still hand in hand in the dark, Bill asks:

“D-do you want t-to l-l-earn asl?” and Mike blinks because it doesn’t feel like it fits anything that’s happened today or their hands, warm where they’re touching.

“What?” he asks and it’s probably the wrong thing to say because Bill let's him go and Mike feels like he should retract, should tell him: _yes, of course_ but he’s never been good at this part, at agreeing without knowing what he’s agreeing to, putting all of himself into someone else’s hands. Or maybe he is. Maybe he’s been getting better and better at it and it scares him how easy it is to let them pull him into so instead he waits, watches Bill fiddle with his bike.

“We’re t-taking classes,” he says, eventually. “B-Bev and Ben a-and I. It’d be c-cool if-” he breathes out, gestures between them. “Y-you know.” It makes sense, he thinks. Bill might not be good at speaking but he knows communication and this would make it easier.

“Yeah, okay,” Mike tells him and wonders if Bill will ask the others, too. There’s something in him that wishes he won’t. Desperate to have something that’s _theirs_ and then he follows Bill in the direction of home and refuses to think about why that is.

*

He doesn't know when or why it changes. He's thinking about the way they all looked in Bill's living room, yellow light falling on their bodies and then he wakes up thinking about kissing them and it feels like something breaks, inside him, like this feeling has been piling up somewhere in his chest and now it’s seeping into the rest of his body, overtaking everything. 

It occurs to him as he’s making coffee one morning that if there’s fire, water and earth then there must be air too, somewhere. He wants to ask them, next time he sees them, if they’ve realized it yet and if they have, why they never mention it but when he goes, Ben grabs his hand and says, eyes full of wonder and excitement in his voice:

“C’mon, Mike, we’re building blanket forts,” and drags Mike into Bill’s living room and Mike thinks the answer would not be kind to him so doesn’t end up asking. They look beautiful, in the low light of the desk lamp Bill brought from his bedroom to see in their fort. Soft and yellow and like they belong exactly where they are. 

*

The control has never been his. The fog lifts. There are no bees and there is no honey. It’s only him and the wind and _them_. Waiting.

*

Bill’s driving them home after their asl class, Mike in the passenger seat, Beverly with her head in Ben’s lap in the backseat. She’ll probably be asleep by the time Bill drives her back. Ben keeps practicing signing words they learned today over her head. Mike watches him ask _where are we going_ and _what are you doing_ in his peripheral vision, over and over and he wants to sign _I don’t know_ but instead he signs _I love you_ because that’s an easy one. He doesn’t think Ben notices. That’s good, he tells himself but something stings.

*

He’s laying on the floor of Richie’s bedroom, Ben leaning into him, saying:

“So they used angelica for _everything_ even the plague, how weird is that,” and Mike wants to listen to him, he does, but his chest feels heavy and he can’t do anything but look at him. It feels, sometimes, like Ben shines and it takes Mike’s breath away. So he tries not to look at him too much. Focuses his eyes on the foot of Richie’s bed.

In the room with them, Richie walks up to Stanley and they sit on the windowsill, talk. Eddie’s showering. Bill and Beverly are downstairs, picking a movie. It’s raining. The day feels heavier, somehow. Like it’s building up to something big. He thinks if he opens his mouth right now and says what’s on his mind, something will change, shift, he just doesn’t know what.

When he looks back at Ben, Ben has gone quiet and he’s looking at Mike and now, Mike is looking at him and it seems they’re a second away from Mike’s heart breaking his ribs and he wants to say something- anything.

Then, of course, the door to the room is opening and he feels himself move away from Ben and guilt finds home in his frame, somehow. 

“We p-picked a movie if y-y-you g-guys wanna start,” Bill’s saying. His sweater is blue and he’s looking at where Richie and Stanley are smoking, as if he’s only talking to them and Mike doesn’t know how he feels about it. 

“You guys go set up and shit, we’ll wait for Eddie,” Richie tells him and Mike swallows, stands up. It’s been like this, recently. Stanley, Eddie and Richie and then them four. Feels like there’s something there, laughing at him. He’s trying desperately to fit himself in the spaces they leave him. Ben grabs Bill’s hand. Mike closes the door behind him. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever succeed.

Something _does_ shift, later but it doesn’t happen with him. Or maybe it does. Maybe everything about them affects the others. The other three come downstairs and now it’s _RichieEddieandStan_ and Mike feels strangely like he should have seen it happening. Like it was always there and then the heartache that has settled in his chest doubles and he forgets to pay attention to the movie they’re watching.

He wakes up second, the next morning. Stanley’s sitting at the kitchen table already, morning light coming in through the windows, a cup of coffee in his hands.

“Sleep well?” Mike asks pulling back a chair to sit in front of him. He should make coffee too but he wants to talk while it’s still only them two. 

“Better than ever,” Stanley answers. Soft. Honest. It’s hard to get him like this but Mike’s not surprised. From the kitchen he can see the couch in the living room where Eddie, Richie and Stanley had ended up falling asleep, tangled together. 

“Good,” Mike smiles and tries to fight back the voice in the back of his head whispering how much he wants that, too. Stanley hums, takes a sip of his coffee. It feels like he knows, somehow. Like he’s waiting and Mike ignores the urge to bite his fingers, pulls at the hem of his t-shirt for way too long before he works up the courage to say something. And he means to say: _I’m in love with Ben, Beverly and Bill_ in one clean sentence but he chokes midway and ends up whispering:

“I’m in love with-” he’s never said it out loud. He’s never even allowed himself to have feelings like that for anyone and now it’s all three of them and it’s so much.

“I know,” Stanley tells him, still soft and gentle and raw. And of course he does, not only that Mike feels this way but also what that feeling is, how it wraps around your heart and refuses to leave. Mike breathes out, easier, looks out the window.

“I don’t know what to do about it,” he says and he wonders if Stanley will tell him to just go for it, like this isn’t more complicated than it is with him. Mike _has_ a soulmate and he will find them eventually and he will love them, more than he could ever love Beverly or Bill or Ben and the idea of that is suffocating. He can barely stand this, all of it, right now. It feels like his heart will explode and he doesn’t know how it could ever get bigger but it will and he will not be able to control it. 

“That’s for you to decide,” comes a voice from the living room and they both turn to look at Richie, sitting up on the couch, only barely awake. Mike wants to say: _It’s not_ but he’s aware that they aren’t alone now and afraid that Ben or Bill or Beverly will come downstairs and hear him.

“I’ll make us coffee,” he tells Richie and they let him drop the subject. 

*

Later, when he’s putting on his shoes, Stanley leans on the wall next to him and says:

“They’re not law, you know. They don’t mean shit.” Mike doesn’t start crying but he wants to and then he says his goodbyes and when Bill asks if he should drive him home, Mike says no because he doesn’t want to sit in his car and feel both like he’s always supposed to be there and like he has no place there. The walk isn’t that far anyway.

It feels like he has something to prove. To the universe but also to himself. To his mark. To fate. To the idea of soulmates in general. He’s been forcing himself into the grey area of what both is and isn’t since the fire. He’s been saying yes to everything he knows and no to everything unfamiliar and he’s been trapping himself in an equilibrium. 

He walks home now, cold morning breeze against his skin and he signs _I love you_ , letter by letter, over and over, to himself.

*

At the public library, Beverly lifts her head from her book to catch him watching her. Her eyes are an endless blue. Her sweater is yellow. Her nail polish is red. He thinks of all the things he wants to tell her, at the tip of his tongue and can’t force himself to speak. He wants to say _I know you three deserve a fourth_ in a way that is both a desperate attempt to make them love him and admitting that they deserve better than him. 

“I love you,” he tells her instead and watches her face go soft. Somewhere in the fantasy section, her two boyfriends are picking out books.

“I love you too, Mike,” she answers and it feels too big to be this simple but it’s not. Beverly goes back to her book. Mike wonders what he will have to do to change things, to make it clear that he wants to be able to decide for himself.

He clears his throat and before she can look at him again, says:

“I don’t want to find my soulmate.”

There’s a moment when Beverly freezes where she’s sitting. Her breath catches in her teeth and then she goes back but she’s no longer moving to look at him, eyes on her book.

“Why?” she asks, slowly, like the word is heavy on her lips. 

_I just want you three._

Ben and Bill come back to the table then, as if they can tell what’s happening. Ben rests his arm on the back of Beverly’s chair. Bill sits down next to Mike, bumps their knees together. And this is what he wants, really. Them four, together, however they will have him. So maybe it doesn’t matter if nothing changes and he’s left wanting to be with them without ever getting there. He’ll take this if this is all they are willing to give him.

“How’s your book?” Ben asks then and it takes Mike a moment to realize he’s asking him and not Beverly. He has his thumb on the page to not lose it but he hasn’t been reading.

“It’s good,” he says though he doesn’t care for it yet and he goes back to reading. Ignores the way he can feel them watching him, ignores the warmth climbing up his neck. As long as they’re here, he thinks. As long as he’s with them.

*

But then, of course, he’s not the only one making decisions in this. He’s sitting on a blanket on the grass in his family’s farm, watching the grass around them catch in the breeze. Behind them, Stanley is showing Richie and Eddie how to make flower crowns.

“I wish it was buttercup season,” Mike says, more to himself than them and then because it sounds way too wishful, adds “You guys would like that, you know, since of the petname,” and he’s motioning between Ben and Bill and then his hand catches in the air before he can do anything because Bill is _kissing_ him, suddenly, his hands holding Mike’s face and he’s kissing back before he even realizes what’s happening because he’s been waiting for this since he first met them, it seems.

Bill pulls away too fast, just as Mike rests his hand on his waist but he stays as close to Mike as he was, leaning over the blanket to touch him, knees pressing into the ground. There’s a moment when no one says anything and then, because Bill will always be a person like that, he asks:

“W-was that o-okay?” like he can’t still feel Mike holding onto him, refusing to move because he wants this more than anything.

“Yes, of course, I love you three,” he says as quickly as he can, afraid he might start crying if he takes any longer and then Bill is breathing out, grinning, leaning in to kiss him again.

“Learn to share!” Richie yells at them. Yells at Bill, Mike realizes because as soon as he pulls away again, Beverly is pushing him out of the way, her fingers on Mike’s shoulders, smiling just as bright as Bill is.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this,” she tells him and he thinks of that day on the library stairs and cigarette smoke in the air and he doesn’t get to tell her he does before she is kissing him too. Mike’s hands find their way to her hair and she smiles into the kiss, shifts in place to wrap her arms around her neck.

“Beverly,” Ben says behind her to make her let go. It’s intoxicating, the way it seems they don’t want this to end just as much as he doesn’t.

“Hey,” Mike manages though his lips feels sorta numb and his brain is racing. It’s only Ben now, in front of him. Bill’s holding his hand, Mike notices, feels like there are flowers blooming in his chest, moves closer to Ben. “Hey buttercup,” says and laughter bubbles out of both of them.

“Hurry up!” yells Richie and then there’s a sound and Mike thinks someone just pushed him onto the grass or maybe tackled him but he’s only looking at Ben so he doesn’t know.

“Hey,” Ben answers, the same breathless Mike feels and then they move to kiss each other at the same time. He thinks _I love you_ and keeps thinking it until he’s sort of shaking and Ben feels like he’s shaking too and they pull away just to have Bill and Beverly wrap themselves around them, hold them in place.

Later, they join the other three to make flower crowns. The sun is warm on his skin and they are warm too, next to him.

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes when you want something (read: a fic focusing on Mike and his romantic feelings) you gotta make it yourself
> 
> title from hooped earrings by the front bottoms
> 
> im @ birduris.tumblr.com if u wanna come talk to me


End file.
